Setup Instructions for Running the Project Locally

[mohamedachrefhacheni]

Privileged issue

• I'm @tiangolo or he asked me directly to create an issue here.

Issue Content

Hi team,

I'd like to propose adding a clear local setup guide to help new contributors or developers get the project running on their machines quickly.

what could be included in the README.md ?

[rissem]

First off I just want to say thank-you! Coming from Rails, I've always wished for a sensible list of good defaults for a full-stack app in the Python world and it seems like this is it!

Let me know if a list of things that caused confusion for me would be helpful and I can clean up my notes for you.

[ChrisSQL]

I just started with this Stack so its all new to me. The biggest pain by far was hosting Traeffik. I still have no clue why its even used or what benefit it has.

After months of developing locally i wanted to host and it was a huge pain after thinking it would be easy.

In the end i used Render. Frontend and backend on Different Services and a Database running Postgres separate also. Was just a matter of getting the Env variables correct.

Really should recommend a host that it can be deployed on very easily.

Also very frustrating is the frontend setup to have to login. Should be able to just browse a website without an account and have access to endpoints etc or at least have an example of an endpoint that doesnt use Auth included.

[cassmtnr]

The project has a lot of potential in my point of view.

I didn't find any instructions how to setup the database.

Maybe the steps could be revised, if you start in a new machine you probably have nothing installed, so maybe a setup.sh with installing all the tools, and then a step by step until the project is running fully?

[ChrisSQL]

After months of development as a learning experience with this i realised that NextJS is far superior for the frontend. SEO and image handling is incredible.

I took the backend from here. Went to render to host FastAPI and Postgres DB then hosted a Nextjs frontend on Vercel.

If they swapped this fronted to NextJS and added a one click hosting solution on something it would be the best available.

I see a lot of comments saying they swapped the frontend so im not the only one.

[ChrisSQL]

Not step by step but rough guide would be

Think of them as 3 different things for a start

Have Github Branch

Setup 2 x Web Services on Render and a PostgresDB

PostgresDB - I ended up setting up tables manually using the models in the backend fields

Backend
Frontend

Youll need to flip in and out of each setup to get your Frontend and Backend URLS etc as you setup

When setting up Render Web Services on setup in the config in the directory use /frontend and /backend as base directory

Then you just need to get all your ENV variables correct

Best you could probably do is start and when you run into issues ask here and ill answer them as theres probably a few steps im forgetting. Ill reply ASAP

[ChrisSQL]

Just branch it, create a web service and postgres on render and set it up. Youll need to have your ENV Variables of each. i.e db passwords etc. Theres Logs in the WebService and Postgres that will tell you whats going wrong

…

On Sat, Jun 28, 2025 at 4:47 PM Cassiano ***@***.***> wrote: *cassmtnr* left a comment (fastapi/full-stack-fastapi-template#1544) <#1544 (comment)> @ChrisSQL <https://github.com/ChrisSQL> do you have a step-by-step for only the backend? And how did you connect to the frontend? — Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub <#1544 (comment)>, or unsubscribe <https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/AAT4QVLFR2PLAUA42AEGI533F22HLAVCNFSM6AAAAAB3D5SFESVHI2DSMVQWIX3LMV43OSLTON2WKQ3PNVWWK3TUHMZTAMJVGU3DAMJVGQ> . You are receiving this because you were mentioned.Message ID: ***@***.***>

[Zigr]

Learn material part, guys.
The template developer is great.

[ChrisSQL]

Learn material part, guys.
The template developer is great.

I did wish it worked out straight out the box for hosting for me. Thought me a lot but when I eventually got the site online I realised that NextJS was easy to swap out and just performed a lot better. Night and day really with SEO and site speed. If it wasn't for this boilerplate I wouldn't have even got a start.

[cassmtnr]

Thanks for the answers :) I will check it out and let you know

[ChrisSQL]

Do. It’s quite straightforward once you learn a few small lessons and those lessons are used across all these boilerplates so well worth learning.

…

On Sat 28 Jun 2025 at 18:21, Cassiano ***@***.***> wrote: *cassmtnr* left a comment (fastapi/full-stack-fastapi-template#1544) <#1544 (comment)> Thanks for the answers :) I will check it out and let you know — Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub <#1544 (comment)>, or unsubscribe <https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/AAT4QVJCEX4GL7GRNSJPU333F3FKRAVCNFSM6AAAAAB3D5SFESVHI2DSMVQWIX3LMV43OSLTON2WKQ3PNVWWK3TUHMZTAMJVHAZTGNRWGY> . You are receiving this because you were mentioned.Message ID: ***@***.***>

[golharam]

Same here from me, and I"m pretty familiar with everything used in this stack except for Traeffik. I was hoping to just clone this repo and run 'docker compose up' from the root directory. That worked...sort of...but I can't log in using test@example.com / changethis combination. I'm not sure this is write but that's what I found digging through the docker compose file. It would be nice to have this explicitly documented in the README or deployment guide.

It would also be nice to see a tutorial that builds up to the template. Just my two cents...

[sarfere]

The local operation of this project is extremely chaotic. I also don't see how to configure my existing database, and the documentation presents Docker as an indispensable dependency. Can't all these be removed? Perhaps I don't want Docker at all and just want to run and test it simply.

[jakob1379]

I agree that the documentation could be a bit clearer but it is not that hard to spin up locally.

Reading the .env the very first lines states:

# Domain
# This would be set to the production domain with an env var on deployment
# used by Traefik to transmit traffic and aqcuire TLS certificates
DOMAIN=localhost
# To test the local Traefik config
# DOMAIN=localhost.tiangolo.com

So choose whichever you like (tiangolo.com is just for local htttps) it works fine either way.

Depending on when you read this you might have to tweak this:

BACKEND_CORS_ORIGINS="http://localhost,http://localhost:5173,https://localhost,https://localhost:5173,http://localhost.tiangolo.com,http://dashboard.localhost.tiangolo.com,http://dashboard.localhost/"

Besides that it is just running

docker compose up -d --build --remove-orphans --renew-anon-volumes

to bring up a fresh stack with the services at

• UI: dashboard.localhost.tiangolo.com
• mailcatcher: http://dashboard.localhost.tiangolo.com:1080/
• adminer: http://adminer.localhost.tiangolo.com/
• API: api.localhost.tiangolo.com/docs and api.localhost.tiangolo.com/redoc

[tiangolo]

Hey there, please take a look at the several README.md and docs files in the project, that might be what you ŕe looking for:

• https://github.com/fastapi/full-stack-fastapi-template/blob/master/README.md
• https://github.com/fastapi/full-stack-fastapi-template/blob/master/development.md
• https://github.com/fastapi/full-stack-fastapi-template/blob/master/deployment.md
• https://github.com/fastapi/full-stack-fastapi-template/blob/master/backend/README.md
• https://github.com/fastapi/full-stack-fastapi-template/blob/master/frontend/README.md